Archive for April 2022
This Is What An Escape To The Country Looks Like In Indonesia
Asef Saeful Anwar on relocating to the foothills of Mount Merapi.
Read MoreYogyakarta: Minimum Wage, Maximum Toil
For Amanatia Junda, Yogyakarta is a place of cultural and intellectual vibrancy and expansive political dreamings, but not everything about the city is rosy.
Read MoreIt’s Hard to Make Counselling Sessions Feel Like Safe Places In Bali
Made Ayu Dyah on the difficulties of seeking mental health care in Denpasar.
Read MoreOnline Learning In The Javanese Countryside Isn’t As Easy As Turning On Zoom
The school where I teach is in a small village on the outskirts of Pemalang, a city of around 1.5 million people in north-central Java. The road I take to get there, while asphalted, is only around three metres wide, pothole-riddled, and flanked left and right by rice-fields…
Read MoreThe Kost of Freedom
Young people in Indonesia commonly think of living in a kost, or studio flat, as the essence of freedom. Vema Novitasari wonders: are they right?
Read MoreAprilia From The Block
East Jakarta in late afternoon. The roads were chock-a-block with commuters. The chaos on Jakarta’s roads was the first thing that struck me when I moved there. I spent most of my time in the national capital stuck in gridlock…
Read MoreMasbagik, The City That Never Sleeps
Masbagik is where I call home. Like all homes, it’s a storehouse of old memories. When I was young, maybe three or four years old, my…
Read MoreWhy I Walk With My Eyes Cast Down In Jatinangor
In my four years as a college student in Jatinangor, a small city just outside Bandung, West Java, I shied away from looking straight ahead of me when out and about. When walking, I assumed a hunched, bowed posture and I kept my eyes fixed on the ground, looking up just often enough to avoid crashing into anything. Not without cause, naturally…
Read MoreLast Angkots of Bekasi
A view from inside the dilapidated minibuses that rattle across Southeast Asian cities.
Read MoreI Hiked Mount Rinjani in the Depths of the Pandemic
It began with my friends and I making plans to hike Mount Raung at the start of 2020…
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